


Consequences

by F-117 Nighthawk (F117_Nighthawk)



Series: Dark Matter [8]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Keith & Shiro (Voltron) are Adoptive Siblings, Keith is a physicist not an engineer or a mechanic someone help him, Major Character Injury, Mind Meld, Missing Scene, Post-Season/Series 01, Repairs, Sort of? - Freeform, mid-wormhole incident, tbh i should probably go back and add those last two tags to uhhh everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2020-10-01 22:34:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20426795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/F117_Nighthawk/pseuds/F-117%20Nighthawk
Summary: After falling out the side of a wormhole, Keith tries to keep everyone alive long enough for Allura to find them.





	1. Searching

**Author's Note:**

> in which there is much foreshadowing and avoidance of my materials textbook (I thought I was done with chemistry >:( )

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith goes looking for the other person he knows is on this planet.

Keith groaned and moved to rub his eyes, but his arm ran into something hard before it got there. Opening his eyes, he blinked at nothing for a moment before realizing his helmet was still on.

_ Damn _ he had a headache. He pushed his helmet off and ran his fingers through his hair, getting the bangs that had managed to wriggle their way out of the bobby pins out of his eyes. He didn’t _ feel _ any cuts or bruises that would signal anything, but everything else pointed towards a concussion. 

Keith scanned Scarlet’s cockpit, trying to figure out what had knocked him out. The way he was slumped in the chair could only happen if when he’d been knocked out the mag-locks had still been active, which meant that Scarlet was _ probably _ still in working condition. Although, her consoles weren’t lit, nor were her viewscreens. The only light in the cockpit was from his armor’s running lights. He leaned forward and poked a console; in response a holo lit up a scrawl of Altean letters.

With a huff he put his helmet back on and set the translating code on it. (Pidge or someone really needed to switch the Lion’s OS over. What was he going to do if Scarlet went down and his helmet was out of commission?) The scrawl turned out to read _ navigation systems down, secondary priority; maneuvering thrusters damaged, tertiary priority; left megathruster damaged, secondary priority. Cub is unharmed; shutting down megathrusters and secondary fuel conversion matrices for repairs. _

Cub? Wh--oh.

Good ol’ Scarlet. 

He gave the console a gentle pat and a soft smile. “Okay, girl, you get some rest. I’ll see where we are.” With that Keith sealed his helmet and made his way to the back of the cockpit. As he poked his head out of Scarlet’s top hatch, he was greeted with grey. And grey, and grey, and…..grey. It looked like they’d made a rather large scar along a plateau of grey rock. At least there didn’t seem to be Galra crawling all over looking for them.

How had they managed to very clearly crash, but there weren’t enemies after them? They’d been at Zarkon’s central command, the others had grabbed Allura, he was fighting Zarkon to keep Kuro away from him, Shiro had saved him and gotten him back to the Castle, but then something had gone _ wrong, _ and they’d fallen out the side of the wormhole, and he and Shiro had ended up--

_ Shiro. _

“Shiro!”

His comm crackled in silent static back. “Damnit,” he growled, turning in a slow circle. It was hopeless, though, he had no frame of reference from the crash for where Kuro and Shiro were. But there was… something. Something to what was probably the east, almost like a whine at the very edge of his hearing.

What the hell, not like he had any better leads. He flipped his comm on and started running. “Shiro!”

Maybe a klick after he started his comm shrieked and he heard “Keith?”

“Shiro! Shiro, hang on, I’m coming to you.” 

* * *

He’d lost track of how long he’d been running somewhere after he’d gotten across the canyon. The whine was getting steadily louder, but he still couldn’t pick out anything approaching a specific tone. It was more like… a _ presence. _Big and powerful in the back of his mind.

Shiro had stopped responding, whether because whatever had been attacking him had knocked him out (or worse, but he couldn’t think about that) or he simply didn’t have enough power, Keith didn’t know but he was worried either way.

What wound that was _ steadily growing bigger? _ Shiro shouldn’t have had any opportunity to _ get _ injured, not even in the crash. Unless Kuro was damaged far worse than he remembered….

Another geyser almost sent him flying, shaking him back to the moment that, despite adrenaline making his ribs feel nothing more than cold and far away, he’d definitely broken a rib or two slamming into the canyon wall. A frustrated growl worked its way out of his throat as he picked himself off the ground. Damn this stupid planet, damn the stupid geysers, and damn malfunctioning wormholes. 

“Shiro? Shiro, come on, please answer.”

He started running again. 

* * *

The whine was _ loud _ but at the same time it _ wasn’t there. _

An insistent beep prompted Keith to look at the energy gauge for his armor. Critical levels. The crystal matrix still had a large crack through it from his fight with the druid and was struggling to keep up with how hard he was pushing it. His damaged jetpack from the same fight was using more and more power to fight even this planet’s (or moon? He was beginning to think it was a moon) weak gravity. 

He _ had _ to find Shiro. 

* * *

The jetpack completely gave out just as Keith spotted a rock that sure didn’t look like it’d started out where it was. It was crushed, gouged out of the surface of the moon like a kid dragging a finger through icing. 

The only problem was that it looked like it was blocking his only path through a giant rock wall to Kuro, and he had no jetpack. All he had was exhausted legs and an increasing annoyance at the now very, _ very _ loud and yet _ not there _ whine. 

He fiddled with the controls of his armor, eyeing the distance to the shortest height-wise spike that he could conceivably get over. None of them were a height he wanted to try and scale without some sort of assurance he wasn’t going to crash into the ground. A few dozen meters would mean a few hundred kilowatts of fuel, so maybe if he turned off a few nonessential systems he could get a little more out of the damaged crystal matrix….

Keith’s armor promptly beeped at him that it had already _ done _ that, and he really needed to fix it, thank you very much.

He said fuck it and started manually diverting essential systems while making a mental note to ask Coran or Allura for a _ fucking grappling hook. _

Bits of his armor winked off one by one until he was left with just the extremely basic air filter, pressurization monitor, and the comm. Keith stared up at the spike, eyeing the distance again. He took three giant steps back. “Here goes nothing.”

With a flying leap he activated the jetpack and went soaring up over the spike but he went _too far_ and failed to land on it and apparently the rock wall was hiding a fucking _canyon again_ so he was too high to not at the very least break something when he landed and he had _enough_ broken bones for the moment so he flailed, trying to catch something and managed to grab onto a rock, yanking his shoulder in a very bad way in the process.

But he didn’t hit the ground and become a Paladin pancake so. That was a plus. 

He was still pretty far off the ground, but without the extra momentum of the jetpack aiding his fall it seemed a lot more doable. _ And, _ he’d managed to turn the jetpack off at just the right point so he still had a little bit of power left in it, which might save him a broken ankle. 

Keith let go. His jetpack sputtered out almost as soon as he activated it, but it slowed him down enough he managed to roll and absorb the momentum in a way that didn’t break his legs.

That didn’t mean it didn’t jostle everything else he’d managed to do, though. He lay on the ground for a moment, reveling in the fact that he was (mostly) still in one piece and trying to catch his breath, before his eyes caught on a very familiar shape.

“Kuro. Oh thank god. Shiro! Shiro, where are you?”

Predictably but disappointingly, he didn't get a response. Whether that was because he didn’t have enough power to run his comm or Shiro couldn’t respond or, quite possibly, _ both _ remained to be seen. 

Something large growled nearby and Keith jolted upright. He winced as the act pulled on his side, but managed to get himself to his feet. From his new, upright vantage point, he could see he was on some sort of ledge on the side of the canyon, a few dozen meters away from the Black Lion, and below them….

“SHIRO!”

Shiro was holding his side, obviously trying to guard the wound he’d mentioned earlier, helmetless with his Galran hand extended and activated at his side. Four tusked purple tiger-lizards were advancing on him slowly, moving with the lithe grace of a predator with its prey cornered. Keith narrowed his eyes and stepped back, ready to launch himself down, but when he tried to summon his bayard, his armor beeped at him that it didn’t have enough power to let him summon it.

He was forced back to the reality that even if he jumped down there, survived the fall without injuring himself further as Shiro probably had, and managed to fight all the creatures off Shiro with just his knife, there was no way to get back _ up. _ Back up to medical supplies and the Lions and a working commlink and a way off this _ stupid _ rock and this was _ stupid, why _ did this always happen to _ them he just wanted his damn BROTHER to BE OKAY. _

Keith whirled and glared at the Black Lion. Scarlet had managed to get to him from further away several times, so _ why _ was Kuro not helping? He wasn’t nearly as damaged as Scarlet.

“Goddamnit, ** _help me.”_ **

* * *

Something awoke.

It ran systems checks, finding that its self navigation and maneuvering systems were completely offline. The healing programs would take a few more vargas and distance from the corruption to fix it, but it would get done. It ran more systems checks. There was… something else damaged…

** _Cub._ **

Kuro growled and reached out to Shiro again, but Shiro was in too much pain and distracted by something to pay attention to him. There was something chasing him, cornering him like a shuval hunted a seffacha. He needed to _ help _ but he _ couldn’t, _ his control pathways were damaged and without a Paladin there was no way he could move their set of controls-- 

\--Something familiar moved near him. He was a firestorm of swirling quintessence, and he was _ angry. _

It didn’t need to be a full connection, just enough to have the controls respond to him. It didn’t need a pure-type quintessence, just enough air to bond with the purified marthuzitok. It didn’t need to be permanent, just long enough to save Shiro.

** _Help me._ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s Not Adrenaline Keith


	2. Bonds, Maintenance, and Important Conversations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith fixes (well, attempts to) some shit and has a talk with Shiro.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oops I wrote half of this, had the idea for the first section, and then played fire emblem for like two weeks instead.

Something changed.

He had never done this quite like this before. Zarkon had mostly closed his connection before he had met Tazíg, and once Shiro came along Tazíg was… well. 

He remembered waking up to Shiro, to the steady core of air surrounded by shifting currents of other elements. A wise, experienced leader who had seen perhaps too much of the universe. He had connections to the others already, and a rank they recognized and admired. He was exactly what they would need. 

But now he,  _ they,  _ had need of another. He was under no illusion that Shiro would want to, or was even capable of being their head forever. His mind was one that had been sucked of its wanderlust, exhausted of its need to prove itself.

He was willing to continue, willing to put his life on the line for the good of the universe, to play the part of a good soldier. A beautiful marionette, played by the greatest puppeteer to ever ply their craft. 

But he wanted to go home. 

So that was why, when the tendril of fiery emotion lashed out over the meld, he latched onto it. He owed Shiro that much. He owed Shiro the chance to go home. And that meant he needed to get moving.

Time slowed to a crawl for him, as it always did when he did this. The universe narrowed down to pinpricks, to the very particles that made up its atoms. Basic physical forces stopped working. Work stopped happening, entropy stopped driving. Everything that held the universe together froze, just for a moment, uncaring of moving towards order or chaos. 

And in that moment, he pulled at the firestorm standing in front of him. He pulled until it pulled back, stretching taught as sparks danced along it, from it, through it into him and for a moment he felt  _ all _ of it, felt the tendrils of the old power he had had so long, long ago, pouring out from them--

The universe snapped back into place. He could feel the desires of the Paladin in front of him, the echo of the words that had allowed him to bond them together. 

** _Help me._ **

The Black Lion opened his mouth, and the Red Paladin raced up the ramp, swinging himself into the cockpit with the ease of someone who had been doing it for years. The controls lit up under his touch, reacting to the air quintessence that drove the winds through the Paladin’s arms, through the controls, into the marthuzitok and titanium body he inhabited and thus into him. 

The added quintessence raced through him like a shot of adrenaline, jumpstarting damaged systems and reactivating offline matrices. Smooth as ever, he stood to his full height. Their target was visible just down the slope, the tiger-lizards surrounding him inching closer. A jolt of determination made its way across the meld; he roared as the firestorm flared, guiding his damaged body effortlessly. There was a sickening crunch as a foot landed on a tiger-lizard, but neither he nor the firestorm cared. A flick of the controls and his tail crushed another beast; the third and fourth ran directly into a beam from his mouth canon. 

His triumph was short-lived, as a jolt of pain reached him from his now mostly dormant connection with Shiro. The firestorm must have somehow felt it too, as he was quickly directed to turn around and lower the ramp. He watched as the firestorm made its way out to Shiro, wrapping him in a gentle hug before hauling him up the ramp. 

Somewhere in the canyon, a hissing call sounded. He turned his sensors towards it and growled low.  **There are more.**

The firestorm glanced up at a screen in his cargo bay, then back down to Shiro. “Hang on, we’ve got to get out of here first.” 

* * *

The Black Lion landed gently in the crater the Red Lion had created. He settled down in a crouch and opened his ramp, letting his Paladins out into the air. He was exhausted, quintessence drained from the fight against Zarkon and the desperate creation of a new bond. He would have to think on how Zarkon had managed such control over him and so thoroughly broken his self-maneuvering system.

Right now he was more interested in the fact that the things that usually changed between Paladins didn’t seem to have changed. He was still aware of himself as what a Human would call male, still had the knowledge of his name as Kuro. The influences from Shiro hadn’t changed a bit. Was it because he and Keith were from the same planet? Because they were siblings? Their ideals were similar, but not to the extent that  _ nothing _ should have changed. They weren’t clones.

Perhaps it was because Shiro was still connected to him? Or maybe there was something underlying in Keith that he hadn’t picked up on yet. Kuro considered the two Paladins sitting against a rock, one fussing over the other as the other tried to get him to take care of himself before him. Hesitantly, he reached out to both of them, feeling their quintessence.

Shiro felt the same as always, the strong core of air unwavering, the winds streaming the streaks of other types around him, but his wound felt like the  _ wrong _ Kuro remembered from the Fall. Whatever the Witch had used had not changed in ten thousand years.

Keith’s firestorm almost didn’t seem aware of him, too focused on Shiro’s wound. But there was something… oddly familiar to him. Something hidden deep in the core that he couldn’t quite make out. He pushed deeper, trying to find it, trying to sense it, figure out why it was so  _ so _ familiar--

\--and was almost violently pushed back by a wall of fire. Keith didn’t even react outwardly, still focused on his brother. It almost seemed like he wasn’t even aware of what Kuro had been trying to do, hadn’t consciously thrown him out. Slightly sheepish, Kuro withdrew. Perhaps this wasn’t the best time to indulge his curiosity. He would wait for them to get out of here before he tried to figure it out.

Kuro settled down further, reactivating the repair programs that had paused during the flight over here. With any luck, he could get his self-maneuvering system back up before Shiro’s wound got too bad. 

* * *

Keith paced between the Lions in worry. Somehow, his desperate plea to the Black Lion had resulted in  _ him _ piloting the Lion, the battle and subsequent flight back to Scarlet with Shiro in the hold a frantic blur of motion and instinct. 

_How?_ _How_ had he done that? The Lions only responded to their chosen Paladins, and yet he’d been able to guide Kuro through the battle. It almost seemed like he’d been _necessary,_ like when he’d first piloted Scarlet. His instincts had lined up with Kuro’s almost perfectly, and yet they felt distinctly _different_ than with Scarlet, like a different side of him was guiding him through.

He forced himself to stop pacing and stopped in front of where Shiro was resting against a rock, seemingly asleep. Keith slumped heavily by him, reaching a hand out to his neck and resting it lightly at the pulse point. It was too fast for sleep, too fast _period_ when combined with the chill of his skin. All the signs pointed towards some sort of infection.

If a slowly widening,  _ glowing _ wound that was now the pink-purple color of oversweet grapes could count as anything as normal as an “infection.” The glow was visible through the bandages Keith had managed to hassle Shiro into letting him put on. It didn’t even seem to be bleeding, like whatever had hit him had managed to cauterize the wound along the way. So it was just… glowing. The entire thing was giving him the same buzzing in his ears that he couldn't place and couldn’t figure out why.

Keith didn’t want to think about what would happen if no one found them soon. 

He sighed and scrubbed his hands over his face, forcing himself to focus on the moment. If Shiro was to make it through this, he had to get the Lions’ beacons working again. To do that, he needed to be able to read their diagnostic systems though, which were  _ still all in Altean, _ which he couldn't read without help. So first priority: find a way to translate the diagnostics. 

Keith stood and stared between the Red and Black Lions. He couldn’t use his helmet because of his armor’s damaged power matrix, and he couldn’t take Shiro’s because it had disappeared somewhere before he’d found him. Scarlet was still down, but he could feel a whirring in the back of his mind that hadn’t been there before he’d found Shiro. 

Taking a deep breath, he walked over to Scarlet. She was still collapsed in the crater she had been in, front legs bent at an awkward angle and nose half-buried in rock. Keith rested a hand on her leg and closed his eyes, reaching for the whirring in his head. “Come on, Scarlet, I need you up and running.”

Slowly, the whirring seemed to double in volume, adding a different strain of harmonics to the noise until it disappeared and the fiery presence he associated with the Red Lion purred in his mind.  **Cub.**

**There you are. How’re you feeling?**

She sent an image of Voltron stepping on an ant. 

**That good huh?**

**Next time, how about we ** ** _don’t _ ** **attack the former Black Paladin?**

Keith paused midway through removing his hand.  **You ** ** _knew?_ **

**We all knew. Sort of thought you knew too. We came into our current form in part by his doing.**

**_No, we didn’t know!_** **_That’s how Shiro and Kuro got hurt!_**

**Well we figured it out at ** ** _that_ ** ** point. I’m sorry. If I had realized that you didn’t know and it was going to be an issue, I would have said something. **

**You’re in my ** ** _head._ ** ** How did I not know? How did you not pick up that I didn’t know?**

**We try not to pry. The bond already requires a vast invasion of privacy, and breaching that without explicit permission can lead to… problems. We also have mental shields to prevent things from slipping out. Until those drop, a Paladin cannot sense our memories.**

Keith sighed and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes.  **Okay. Fine. What’s done is done. I need help getting yours and Kuro’s beacons working so Allura can find us.**

* * *

“Keith?”

Keith snapped his head up at the whispered, barely-there voice, and slammed his head into a support beam. Cursing in both languages he knew, he extricated himself from the Red Lion’s engines and hurried over to the outcropping he’d leaned Shiro against. “Hey.”

Shiro’s eyes were bleary, but he managed to focus on Keith for at least a little bit. “Hay’s for horses.”

“Now is  _ really _ not the time for dad jokes, Shiro.”

Shiro huffed a laugh, but winced and hissed as it pulled on his side. Keith bit his lip and rummaged through the supply bag, looking for the painkillers and water. “How’s the wound?”

“Getting… bigger all the time.”

Keith’s eyes widened and he snapped back around to look at his brother. The wound didn’t  _ seem _ to have grown any bigger, but he couldn’t really tell between the bandages and the odd glow. He didn’t want to waste bandages removing them right now, but he was sorely tempted.

“Just...trying to lighten the mood?” Shiro gave a forced smile in response to his unamused look.

Keith sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Just… just hang on, okay? Allura and Coran will figure out a way to find us soon.”

“What if they don’t?”

“What?”

“The Lions are damaged, badly. What if they can’t find us?”

Keith turned away and bit his lip. He’d always been at lying to Shiro. “They’re not that badly damaged. They’ll find us.” He had to hold onto that hope that he could fix them in time and Allura and Coran  _ would find them. _ He had to.

Silence reigned as Keith held out a tablet of painkillers and some water. Shiro took them shakily in his human hand. He winced at every movement that stretched the glowing wound in his side. Keith poked at the measly fire he’d created from a kit he’d found in Scarlet’s lockers in a vain attempt to keep the chill of the moon’s night away. 

“Hey, Keith?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you ever miss Earth?”

“Not really.” Keith glanced over at Shiro again. He was staring up at unfamiliar constellations, a far away look in his eyes. Keith floundered for something else to say for a moment. “I miss the familiar stars.”

Shiro huffed a small laugh. “That would be what you miss. I still remember all those stories you told me about them. Adventuring around them in spaceships with the most advanced AI in the universe, saving planets and generally being a knight in shining armor. What was the name you called the Pleiades? Alsay something?”

“The Alsaetok Zad,” Keith murmured. “The five siblings.” He looked up at the stars, a half-forgotten voice echoing in his mind, singing stories about the people of the stars and the spaces between. Some of it seemed so familiar now he had to wonder if his mother had been capable of predicting the future. Sentient spaceships, bonded to a single pilot but capable of being so much more.

“I miss them too. It was always comforting, being able to see the same constellations and know that, even if I don’t know anything else, I’m in Sol.”

They fell into silence again. Keith pulled a ration bar out of the survival pack and gnawed on it. He held one out to Shiro, but he shook his head. His laboured breathing was concerning to Keith, but there wasn’t anything more he could do for his brother.

“I miss Colleen’s cooking.”

Keith snorted. “Only when the only option is ration bars of food goo. Hunk spoils us rotten.”

“Well okay, having someone trained in the art of cooking by their gourmet chef grandmother is vastly different from a working mom and dad. But my point still stands.”

“That it’s not so much the food, as Colleen?”

“Yeah,” Shiro’s voice was low, downcast. “The people. Colleen’s probably worried sick that both of you are gone, on top of the three of us.”

“Pidge left her a note. I uh, don’t think I ever told her what happened to me, though.”

Shiro hummed. “I wish I could talk to Adam.”

There was the crux of this whole conversation. Keith set his food down on his leg and put a gentle hand on Shiro’s shoulder. “I  _ promise _ that you will see him again.”

They both knew that wasn’t a promise Keith had any hope of keeping.

After a moment of silence in which Keith had decided that neither of them was going to acknowledge that fact and gone back to his food, Shiro spoke. “If I don’t make it out of here, I want you to lead Voltron.”

Keith paused with the ration bar halfway bitten.  _ “Don’t talk like that. _ You are  _ making it out of here.” _

“I don’t mean just here, Keith. We’re  _ fighting a war, _ practically  _ alone. _ At any moment the Lions’ life support could malfunction, or the Empire could get a lucky shot, or we could crash a lot worse than we did today. I need to know that Voltron is in good hands if that happens.”

“Well it’s  _ not _ going to. Shiro, no one can replace you, least of all me. So you  _ are _ making it out of here, and you are  _ not _ dying in this godforsaken war.”

“You give yourself too little credit. You’re the strongest person I know. If anyone is capable of being the leader of Voltron, it’s you.”

“I’m not doing that because I’m never going to have to, okay?”

Shiro sighed and leaned his head back against the rock. He seemed suddenly to be far older than his twenties. “Okay.”

Keith glanced down at his food and found his appetite was gone. “I’m going to finish with Scarlet’s engines. Get some rest."

* * *

The Red Lion curled her hind legs under her and shifted so her few undamaged sensors could cover the Black Lion’s blindspots. The act alone drained her energy, but she knew she had to stay conscious, because the Black Lion had  _ done something.  _ Something that had never happened before, something that he couldn’t possibly have any idea of the consequences of because neither did she. 

But she couldn’t confront him, not right now, not while she could see the  _ wrong  _ slowly spreading from Shiro’s side, not while she could feel Keith’s worry driving him between the two Lions and his unconscious brother. Whatever the Black Lion had done had enabled Keith to keep all four of them alive for this long, and seemed to have been the only viable course of action.

So she would wait, and watch. She would make sure her cub would be okay.


	3. Àyfùlsàrù

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith continues to try and get them off the moon. Coran dumps a little more exposition.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GOD I must have rewritten this like FIVE TIMES it just WOULDN'T WORK but I think I finally managed to get the two things I actually needed in (and an extra thing haha!) in a way that wasn't far too long and made some sort of sense.
> 
> Also fuck school for giving me Every Project Ever at once but at least holiday break allows me to hide in my room and write this all day. Now I gotta go finish that half-finished Astral Chain fic that's sitting open on my browser.

Keith stood on the ridge of the impact crater, looking over the horizon. The sun was on its way down, pale orange light reflected through the fog, casting an eerie glow over the grey rock. 

**Cub. You should come back down.**

**Just… give me a minute, Scarlet.**

He felt the Lion give a sympathetic noise. **He still hasn’t woken up.**

**I’m worried. Like really, ** ** _really _****worried. Even though we got your beacon working and a pingback from the Castle, they still haven’t shown up, and Shiro hasn’t woken up since last night and everything I’ve done hasn’t helped and might’ve even made things worse. **

**And?**

**What?**

**I sense an “and.”**

Keith sighed and turned slightly to look at the Lions. Kuro was online now, his self-maneuvering systems back online enough he could get all of them out of atmo when the time came, so all his spare processing power was spent on watching Shiro. Shiro himself was in the Black Lion’s cargo hold, hooked up to its meager medical suite through his armor. It was the best they could do to allow Keith to keep an eye on him while working on the Lions. Scarlet herself was curled by Kuro, most of her power focused on her damaged thrusters, but her head was turned towards him.

**There’s something… wrong with this place.**

**How do you mean?**

He knew he couldn’t put it into words, so he tried to shove everything he was feeling at her. He pushed the feeling that permeated every step, every breath, every glance over the horizon, the feeling that had been following him since they’d landed and he couldn’t shake like _he _was the one doing the watching, but he didn’t know _what. _ It went down through his limbs under the rock to the core of the moon and shivered there, swirling around itself, coalescing, waiting, manipulating, _ watching, _ always at the edge of his hearing, a hidden string pulling at his senses. 

Scarlet took it all in, analyzing it, cross-referencing and computing likelihoods while her conscious mind immediately latched onto the only real possibility. **Does it feel like Shiro’s wound?**

**What?**

**Does the infection give you a similar feeling?**

**I… can’t tell?**

He could tell Scarlet was about to say something, but then changed track. **Nevermind that for now, there’s something over the ridge. **

“Over the ridge?” Keith turned back around. The sun had set fully and the fog was rolling in, covering the planet that was slowly turning into view. He hissed in frustration, unable to see anything more than grey with his broken armor. **Dangerous?**

**Unknown. I wouldn’t--oh damnit, ** ** _Keith._ **

** _You said unknown!_ **

**That didn’t mean ****_go after it!_ ** ** That, in fact, meant the ****_opposite!_ **

**Well, I’m already down here, might as well check it out.**

**You are incorrigible. **

Keith made his way further down the slope with an almost manic grin. Everything about this place was setting him on edge, it was good to have something to focus on. As long as it wasn’t more tiger-lizards, he was good. 

* * *

The ridge Scarlet had sensed something over was about twenty minutes away by foot from their camp. She was grumbling in the back of his head the entire time, something about reckless Paladins and broken thrusters. Keith wasn’t an _idiot, _ he knew that this was potentially dangerous, but he needed to know what it was before it got to camp. He couldn’t risk the Lions getting more damaged, or Shiro getting injured again. 

Hence, his knife in his hand. He kept it in his right hand, left shoulder still stinging with distant pain from earlier misadventures, and crept forward to the side of the ridge. He could just barely see what was in front of him in the last rays of the sun. Keith crept closer, focused on the rock that jutted out from the side. He could be protected from whatever had shown up on sensors but still be able to see them. 

He paused as he reached the corner. There was an odd glow coming from around it. The color was eerily close to the sickly purple that had infected Shiro’s wound. Cautiously, he peeked around the corner--

** _Keith get out of there--_ **

\--and came face to face with a tiger-lizard. The thing was bigger than the others he and Kuro had fought, bulkier, its tusks visibly serrated and dripping with the sickly purple. Its eyes glowed the same color and were focused directly on him.

“Oh shit.”

Keith ran back around the rock and the tiger-lizard roared, spewing bits of the glowing purple venom everywhere. “Scarlet!”

**I ** ** _told you _****this was a bad idea!**

“You can say I told you so later, find me a way out of here!”

**You have two thousand meters of ** ** _plateau _****to cross and ****_my thrusters aren’t working. _Keep**** fucking running, I’ll get Kuro where you are.**

A roar behind him and three tiger-lizards rounding the rock, the big one in the lead, did indeed get him to keep running. He jumped over a rock that had speared into the ground from the crash landing and glanced behind him. The tiger-lizards were too close for comfort; there was no way he could get back to the Lions and their firepower before they caught up to him. Keith still had his knife in hand, but it was a dismal choice in the light of the beasts’ tusks. 

Well, not like he had much of a choice. Determined, he skidded to a stop and turned to face the tiger-lizards. They roared again and pounced--

\--directly into a quintessence blast. The Green Lion of Voltron flew over the plateau, raining hell on the beasts and driving them back behind the ridge before landing in front of him and opening her mouth. “Pidge!”

Pidge stood in the opening, holding onto a handle on the side. “Get in, you reckless idiot. Kuro’s on his way to the Castle with Shiro already; we need to pick up Scarlet.”

* * *

The two arm pilots rushed into the medical bay to barely-controlled chaos. Every single cabinet or drawer that could open in the room was pulled open, contents spilled out all over the floor and counter space. Coran and Allura were both over one of the pods that had been transformed into a bed, a familiar figure laid out on it and an odd-looking container next to them. “Coran, what’s happening?”

Allura glanced up at them. “Oh good, just the Paladins I was hoping to see. Get over here.”

“Uh, what?”

She moved around and grabbed their arms, bodily moving them over next to her. “I need someone he knows. There shouldn’t be enough of this for it to be a problem, but just in case, I might need to use you as a focusing point.”

Pidge and Keith glanced at each other, then at her. “Again, what?”

“I can explain later, just, hold onto my arm. And don’t touch him unless I tell you to.”

They put their hands on her arm as instructed, still exchanging bewildered looks under Allura’s chin. The Altean took a deep breath and closed her eyes before placing one hand on Shiro’s now unbandaged injury.

Nothing happened for what felt like forever, the only sound in the room Allura’s breathing. But then, slowly and all at once at the same time, the glow moved up her arms, draining out of Shiro’s body and into Allura’s, giving her an aura of fuschisa lines. “Coran,” she gasped out. Coran appeared with some sort of container full of something like agar. She placed a hand in it and the glow moved like it was being forced out of her body and into the container until there was no glow left on her. Coran quickly shut the lid of the container, locking whatever was glowing in it.

Keith looked back at Shiro and was relieved to find that he was breathing a lot easier, the concerning paleness of his face replaced with a much healthier color. He moved to help Coran fit the pod suit onto Shiro and move the pod back into its upright configuration.

“He’ll need to regenerate from the minor quintessence drain the àyfùlsàrù infection caused, but he’ll be right as a cavorium angle in a quintant or two!”

They breathed a collective sigh of relief. “Alright, three things: what’s “ayfulsaru” because Jade didn’t translate that, what is “minor quintessence drain” and is it going to happen to us, and what the _ fuck _ is a cavorium angle.”

Allura stretched her arms behind her. “Àyfùlsàrù is… sort of a type of quintessence. More specifically, that type of quintessence,” she pointed at the container that Coran was fiddling with, “It’s not true quintessence, as far as any Altean alchemists were capable of telling. It’s… corrupted. No longer the pure quintessence of Vôltrôn. The legends say that, long before we gave time a name, Älrävlörön attacked Vôltrôn. Their battle split them both into infinitesimal pieces, and the pieces of Älrävlörön corrupted pieces of Vôltrôn. These corrupted pieces could bring the mightiest warriors to their knees in minutes.”

“There’s always a kernel of truth to legends,” Coran continued for her, “In this case, corrupted quintessence has the ability to, well, corrupt more quintessence. If a person comes in contact with it, the corruption will slowly eat away at their quintessence, or “drain” it. Although, drain isn’t exclusively used for corruption’s effects. Overuse of aspects of the Lion-Paladin bond can exhaust both the Paladin and Lion’s quintessence reserves.

“The purer a person’s quintessence, the more in-tune with a single element, the easier it is for the corruption to spread. For a Paladin-capable quintessence, the mightiest warriors our universe will ever know, a small bit can bring them to their knees in minutes. We ran into that during the Fall. The first generation of Paladins were attacked by the Witch, hit with so much corrupted quintessence they fell almost instantly.” Coran looked down at the container in his hand, halfway across the room to the waste space-vent. “The Witch must have caused this too.”

“So, we need to be extra careful of running into her,” Keith nodded, “What about the other Druids? Can they do this?”

“We don’t have any records of other Druids existing during the Fall. I suppose it is possible, but there seems to be something different about Haggar than the rest of the Druids. It’s likely she’s still the only one that can do so.”

“Okay. Guess we’ll have to factor that into any remaining plans. I guess there isn’t anything more we can do for Shiro now. Do we know where Lance and Hunk are?”

“OH no you don’t,” Pidge said, grabbing his arm, “I know you’re injured; you had your weapon in your right hand and you never do that unless you’re injured or dual-wielding. Into a pod with you.”

“Did you not want to know what a cavorium angle was, Number Five?”

* * *

The Blue and Yellow Paladins beelined towards the bridge elevator through the hangar, but Scarlet paid them no mind. Her attention was focused on the Lion settling next to her. **Azul.**

Azul looked at her, a sense of caution curiosity permeating the meld at Scarlet’s insistent tone. 

**What is he.**

**You know what he is, Scarlet, he’s a künantok.**

**He sensed something down there. I need to know if I’m right. The probabilities don’t point towards anything else, but I cannot ** ** _possibly _ ** **be right. You’re the only one that can confirm it. You don’t have to say anything else, I just ** **_need to know._ **

Azul sighed and looked away. She gazed up at the bridge where the Paladins not in healing pods were gathered, bright sparks of quintessence. A flaming river, a roaring hurricane, a bedrock, a smoldering tree. She gazed at the firestorm in the middle of it, unconsciously taking charge in the absence of the familiar whirlwind. She gazed _t__hrough _him, at the tendril curled up beneath the firewall.

**You’re right.**


End file.
